Charita Goshay: Common threads run through womanhood

Katie Holmes just might be the smartest woman since Madame Curie. The soon-to-be-ex-wife of actor Tom Cruise recently orchestrated a disappearance from her marriage that was worthy of a magician’s assistant.

Katie Holmes just might be the smartest woman since Madame Curie. The soon-to-be-ex-wife of actor Tom Cruise recently orchestrated a disappearance from her marriage that was worthy of a magician’s assistant.

Holmes, who grew up in Toledo, was grossly underestimated by the paparazzi, celebrity watchers and the army of handlers who work for Cruise and the Church of Scientology. Somehow, when no one was looking, Katie Holmes grew up, from the doe-eyed girl who once had a Tom Cruise poster in her bedroom to a lioness determined to give their young daughter as much normalcy as is possible under such freakish circumstances.

Her happy-wife head-fake to freedom included using disposable cellphones purchased by friends, filing for divorce in New York, which is more friendly to custodial parents, and hiring three teams of lawyers in three states.

But what does it say that a woman had to go to such lengths to make a new life for herself? Have women really made as much progress as we think?

NOT SARAH

Shortly after rumors bubbled that Mitt Romney might select a woman running mate, other murmurs started downplaying the idea, for fear that any woman other than Condoleezza Rice would have to spend too much time proving that she’s not Sarah Palin.

Really? How many male candidates have had to prove they aren’t Dan Quayle?

Was nothing learned from 2008, when it was presumed that women would flock to vote for McCain/Palin simply because Palin wears lipstick?

This week, a motorcade bearing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the most powerful woman in the world, was pelted with shoes, tomatoes and shouts of “Monica!” during a diplomatic visit to Egypt. Yes, the same Egypt that Clinton helped to liberate from a dictatorship earlier this year went out of its way to remind the world that she was powerless to prevent being cheated on and publicly humiliated by her husband.

It shows that women still must endure stereotypes. Those who are smart, who have mastered the game, are derided as broom riders. Those who are less so are given more credence than they deserve if they’re attractive, even when it’s clear they’re as loony as a diaper-wearing astronaut.

SUDDENLY SINGLE

Holmes is different from most suddenly single mothers in that she’ll never have to scramble a day in her life to make ends meet. She won’t need to work two jobs, if any, to keep her 6-year-old daughter fed and clothed. Even so, breaking up your child’s home can’t be easy, even when you know you’ll be happier for doing it.

Studies have indicated that children living with a single parent are more likely to live in poverty and more apt to suffer from behavioral problems and struggles in school.

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But clearly, money isn’t quite everything. Few people on Earth live better than Tom Cruise, who brings home $22 million a year. Yet it wasn’t enough to keep Holmes down on the farm, albeit a very well-manicured one.

It’s said that Cruise proposed to Holmes, his third wife, at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Perhaps that was his mistake. Maybe Katie Holmes got a wider view of the world from up there, and a whiff of freedom that she never did forget.